Accidents in Time
by kinzeylee
Summary: "Because if I hadn't, I'd have buried you a long time ago." But he does. Over and over and over again. (Set during the Time of the Doctor.)


AN: So if Clara was sprinkled all throughout the Doctor's timeline, versions of her should have been on Trenzalore with him for those four-hundred years. At least, that's my head canon. It also spawned this story. Of course, I don't own Doctor Who.

Summary: "Because if I hadn't, I'd have buried you a long time ago." But he does. Over and over and over again. (Set during the Time of the Doctor.)

 **Accidents in Time**

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"Is something wrong, Doctor?"

The voice breaks him from his work on the wooden nutcracker and he turns toward the source of the noise. A young woman stands in the doorway, dressed in a muted red outfit of skirts and petticoat, the swirling snow outside highlighting her frame.

"Draft," he says. The girls face morphs from worried to embarrassment when she realizes that she forgot to close the door. "Sorry!" she calls back, and with a bang, the winter is locked outside. He turns back to the nutcracker and lays it on the table by the arm of his chair, listening to the swish of her skirts as she approaches.

"Is everything alright?" she asks, trying and failing to keep the worry out of her voice. "They said you were asking for me, only me, but they wouldn't give a reason."

"I didn't give them a reason," he grumbles. This doesn't seem to mollify her in the least, but he shouldn't have expected it would, so he adds, "Nothing's wrong."

"Oh. That's good." She lets out a sigh and her body becomes noticeably less tense. As the town nurse, she probably expected to find a physical ailment when he called. But no. He may be old, but he's not dying yet.

"Sit." He gestures to the chair opposite of him, and she lowers herself onto it slowly, a frown still marring her face. "Are you sure everything is okay?" she asks for good measure.

"Oh, yes yes." He waves off her concern with a flap of his hands (was never able to tame that habit, not through force of will or time) and watches her face. He tries to memorize the slope of her nose, the curl of her lips, the deep brown of her eyes, because he knows from experience that soon all of this will slip away.

"I just wanted to tell you a story," he says, though that is far from the truth. But as he knows quite well, this truth field does not protect against omission.

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He never gave it a second thought. When he sent Clara off, so many years ago, he'd thought he'd seen the last of her. It was for her own good, he told himself. Clara was a woman who lived for excitement and adventure. He didn't want to doom her to living (and dying) in a single town, unable to leave, separated forever from her family. He had seen it before. He wouldn't allow it to happen again.

That's the reason he tells himself when it's late at night and he's sitting alone in front of a roaring fire, and he's got nothing else to do but think. He wouldn't want to doom her to this fate. She would accept it with grace, even outward enthusiasm, but it would be like living at the Maitland's; important but unfulfilling. (At least, that's what he silently repeats to himself, but he knows the real reason, selfish as it may be. )

He does not want to see her die.

Perhaps that's a cowardly reason. He knows she would have much rather stayed by his side. Clara, his Impossible Girl, would brave even the deepest and darkest corners of the Universe for him, if only he asked her to. It amazes him every time, her stalwart loyalty, especially when he has done little to inspire such devotion. Their beginning days were rocky, with him pulling her in and pushing her away, wary of her true nature but drawn to her by her mystery and personality. He had thought she was a trick or a trap. Ironic, as it turned out that the trap was him. He was the death of her, and all because she could not let him go.

So no, he does not want to see her die. He does not want to put her in the ground. He's done it before, but this Clara was the one that came back, time and time again, the one that survived, and he does not want to change that. He wants to remember her as she was, young and beautiful and vibrant, and very much alive. So yes, perhaps it is cowardly, and unfair, and foolish, but he sends her away, _lets her go_ , and doesn't give it a second thought. He will not see her again. This is the end of the road for them, and he thinks it has been a more merciful ending than most.

(Of course, nothing is ever that simple.)

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"There's…a woman," he begins, and thinks _god, isn't there always?_ "We used to travel together through space, before I came here. She sacrificed herself to save me once, even though I did nothing but doubt her. "

"Did she die?" the girl asks (she can't be more than seventeen) and her concern for a woman she doesn't know is clearly written over her face. The irony is not lost on him and his lips curl unbidden into a sour smile.

"No, Oswin," he says. "She didn't."

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.

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It's after a puppet show when he first realizes his mistake.

The crowds have dispersed and while a few humans still mull about, talking in small groups about trivial humany-woomany things, he is essentially left to his own devises. In the old days, this would have meant something exciting and possibly explosive, but Christmastown, once you get past its quaint charm – and if it's not being invaded by anything – is a quiet, placid little bubble in the big wide chaos that is the Universe. In other words: boring.

So, the only thing to do is clean up the puppets, stuff them in a box, close the curtains and the two doors around back to keep the snow from getting inside, and that's it for his day, for his week, for his year. That's it.

He turns to go back to his adopted house when he sees the little girl, no doubt leftover from the crowd of children that had attended the show. She's very small, and bundled up in a coat and scarf she looks even more so. She's just standing there as the snow falls around her and lands in her short brown hair to form a crown of frost – just a few meters from him. She's smiling at him, looking directly in his eyes. _Where have I seen those eyes from_ , he thinks, _why are you so familiar_ , but before he can ask what her name is or why she parents aren't around, the girl has turned around and is skipping away into the swirling snow, vanishing, gone.

That night, he makes the connection. Staring at him in the face, it was. Like most things.

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"I left her behind to come here so she would be safe and happy and I don't think I'll see her ever again." He watches her as he talks, looking for some sign of recognition, but her eyes are blank. So this is only a story to her. Good.

"What do you think you would feel, if you were her?" He's almost scared to hear her answer, but he needs to know before he dies, if Clara could ever forgive him.

Oswin frowns and says, "I'm not her, Doctor. I wouldn't feel the same way."

"I think you would," he counters. "You and she are almost the same person."

She smiles. "Is that why you like talking to me? I remind you of your lost love." And the Doctor didn't know he had it in him to still be embarrassed by such a thing at his age, but he feels the heat of blood rushing to his face and he stammers, "Lost, yes, but we were never – we didn't –" She laughs at his obvious discomfort and says, "It's alright, I was just teasing. I think I understand."

"How would you feel?" he asks again, and she reaches back to play with her hair, a sure sign of her nervousness.

"I think I'd be angry," she begins, twisting a long brown strand around her finger. "I'd be properly cross if you left me behind, especially if I wanted to stay with you." She's staring off into space so she doesn't see his flinch.

"I'd be sad, too, I suppose. If I thought I'd never see you again. I would mourn." He's seen that first hand, the last time Clara was here. She'd come back to an older him and probably realized that he would die on this planet. She'd begun the mourning process while he still drew breath, and it had pierced his hearts.

"I'd feel lost," Oswin continues. "I'd wonder why you didn't want me. I wouldn't know what to do with myself, for a bit." A bit; implying that she would move on, one day. He doesn't doubt that, though it makes the selfish part of him seethe with envy. He promptly tells it to shut up.

"But," she says, and her eyes meet his, deep brown piercing into green. "I'd be hopeful. I would always have hope that one day you'd come back to me."

He supposes she meant for that to make him feel better. (It doesn't.)

.

.

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"I'll hate you one day," she tells him, tears of anger shining in her eyes. Her hands are balled up into little fists, but he's felt the power of her smack before. If there's anything Clara has taught him, it's to not underestimate those of shorter stature.

This one is much more self aware than the others; as in, she knows that she is an echo, one of thousands split across time and space. She understands that somewhere out there in the wide, wide universe, there is an original Clara going about her life. This particular echo also seems to be a bit off, psychologically speaking. He wonders if the two anomalies are mutually exclusive, or if they are connected in some way. He wonders if he even wants to know.

The echo in front of him is starting to sob, vocalizations of emotions that rend the air with their bitterness.

"Oswin…" he reaches out, tries to calm her, but she reels back just out of reach.

"Clara!" she screams, "It's Clara, not Oswin! My name is Clara!"

"Yes, Clara, Clara," he hastily corrects himself, stressing her name in a soothing manner, "I'm sorry."

She glares at him. Even through her tears, it is menacing.

"No," she says, "You're not sorry. Not yet."

His mouth drops open to respond, but she beats him to the chase. "That's alright, though," she says, "it's perfectly fine. Because one day, you'll hate me too. We'll do such terrible things to each other, Doctor, so it'll all come out even in the end." Her voice is flirting with hysteria.

"Clara…" he can't finish up the thought. He has nothing to respond with.

"Why are you still here?" she whispers. He feels his hearts break.

"You know why," he tries gently, "because if the Daleks and the Cybermen, the Sontarans, Weeping Angels, if any of them get to the Time Lords, the universe will be bathed in bloodshed-"

"No," she snaps, cutting him off. Her face is a blank stone. "Why are you here? Right here. Why must you always steal this memory away from me?"

He blinks, once, then again, and then remembers what this is, where they are.

"I'm sorry," he says, but this time, the words truly feel hollow. He backs away slowly, an admission of guilt. She watches, expression cold. Still, he swears her eyes are warm.

"Goodbye, Doctor," she says, and turns away. He leaves her to her mother's grave.

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It's her face that he sees, that wide face and those big eyes, that ski-jump nose, and because as a Time Lord he has never been good at recognizing the signs of age (and because this regeneration has been going a bit senile as of late) he thinks it's really her. Really his Clara. And because he thinks this, he says, "Oh Clara, my Clara, you came back for me."

Upon later reflection, he realizes that this statement made no sense since _he_ left _her_ , and this Clara is actually an Oswin who may or may not understand what he's talking about, but she smiles at him anyway as she lowers herself into the chair opposite his, her back creaking all the way down. "Of course I came," she tells him, voice fond and eyes glowing, but now he can see the tears (the wrinkles, the short sweeping grey hair) and he knows it's not really her. That only makes him love her all the more. (And despise her – can he never escape his failures?)

"I know how much you hate endings, Doctor, but I was hoping that you would allow me this one," she says, a ghost of a smile and a sob mixing in her voice.

"Oi!" he scoffs indignantly, trying to brush off the end of things with a bit of humor, "I may be very old, Oswin, and nearing the end of my life, but I'm not dying yet."

"You silly old man," Oswin says with a laugh, "of course you aren't dying, not yet. But I am."

It hits him in his hearts first, that skip between beats, in both of them, that signify his denial. "No, no, that can't be right. You're only eighty-nine. Just a child!"

"Please, Doctor," she says, and her eyes are big and watering, doing that thing (he could never resist that thing) and she whispers, "Let's have us a proper goodbye, this time? One last Christmas together?"

He tries to joke around it (he knows he shouldn't, he really shouldn't, but he doesn't want to acknowledge the finality, not again) and he says, "A last Christmas in Christmas town? That's a tall order, I'd imagine."

Oswin smiles in that way she does when she's really about to cry. "Oh Doctor," she whispers, "every Christmas is Last Christmas." And from where she's sitting, she reaches out to hold his hand with hers, giving one squeeze that travels like lightning across his skin. And even though he knows it's an impossibility (there's no way she could ever regenerate) he swears that her skin is radiant with golden light, shinning with something that he cannot place into words, but it is beautiful, and haunting, and transient, and all too human. Just like her, the word escapes him.

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"Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events – war, politics, accidents in time – she's thrown out of the hex or he's thrown into it. Since then, they've been yearning for each other across time and space. Across dimensions."

He said this to her once, when he was still relatively young, but oh how old and wise he'd thought himself at the time, waxing eloquent on the nature of love and time. Now, now – after years and years on one planet among the living and the dying and the dead, _such sort human life spans,_ and all the years he had to ruminate on his companions past with no chance to run – now he feels qualified to speak on the matter. He finds that he has nothing to say.

Odd, that.

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 _Change the future_ , she asks, and _do you not think it's anybody else's go yet?_

He replies: _everything ends, Clara_.

And sooner than you think.

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Watching from his window as the men fill up the open ground with displaced dirt, he thinks that perhaps this was how their story was always doomed to end; one dead and the other standing over the grave.

Funny, how accidents in time have a way of ending with earth.

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"Were you always so young?"

No. No, she wasn't.


End file.
